As some of you may know I have been editing a book lately that is more or less a compilation of the Daily Post that I made (as well as some fiction and other goodies) when I was on my last adventure in life living off-grid at That Old Farm.

Anyway, I was doing some editing today and I came across a series of interesting days from that off-grid adventure and thought that they would make for a good 'excerpt' from the book and perhaps make for a pretty decent introduction.

Below is the edited rough draft version of those days from my book (with the working title: 957 Days) and I hope that you will give them a read and that you enjoy them.

Day-631 10-05-2018

Day 631. In the stillness of the morning as soon as I wake up I turn on my netbook, open a text editor, start watching one of my videos from my early days here and start typing out an article about it as the espresso brews and my half-awake brain dissects what the hell was actually going on back then when I was making the video.

I have been doing this every morning for the last few months and I often find it to be a perturbing way to start the day because so much about those early days were difficult, distressing, stressful, challenging and filled with a level of discomfort that forced me to not just redefine my 'comfort zone' but to actually abandon the notion of such a zone completely.

Maybe it seems like an odd way to start my days but I think that a little perturbation goes a long way and is often the stepping stone of any (all) growth... or to use a more accurate term... evolution.

Anyway, I still have a long way to go but starting my days like that are definitely a good reminder of just how far I have actually come and that somehow I have even done a bit of evolving along the way.

It also reminds me to be grateful that my life is not some inane circle-jerk of 'broken thinking' that is more a side product of asinine media and advertisements but is instead something authentic, genuine and wholly original and because of those factors it is no great mystery why I often feel alienated from the mass majority of other humans.

To sum things up... it is nice to be different. Have a nice day or something.

Day-632 10-06-2018

Day 632. I am just going to 'keep it weird' and hope for the best. Have a nice day... or not.

Day-633 10-07-2018

Day 633. To the folks that I do not express it to enough (ever/infrequently) thank you for being in my life and I love you. For those that I do express it to... I miss you and sometimes some good company would be enjoyable. Have a nice day or something and be well.

Day-634 10-08-2018

Day 634. Just a day where I did stuff. More of these similarly vague updates to come because low engagement on this platform encourages me to not spend much time making interesting or informative posts. Have a nice day or something and be well.

Day-635 10-09-2018

Day 635. Okay Sun it would be pleasant if you quit hiding behind the clouds today so that I can have enough electricity to do some uploading to Dtube.

In other news. Life as we know it on planet Earth is probably doomed because of climate change. The small window we had to make a difference is closing and we cannot get our shit together enough to make the necessary changes in time.

Day-636 10-10-2018

Day 636. Exactly how many times does it take for the unprecedented to become the precedent? I am curious because the last two hurricanes have been described that way and the wildfires out west have been described that way.

Day 636. (Again) I just saved over three hundred dollars by popping this tooth out with my tongue.

Day-637 10-11-2018

Day 637. During the previous winter I had an idea for a battery system that would utilize solar power to pump water uphill to be stored in several large holding tanks which would in essence act as 'batteries' for when there was limited sun so that I could then power my micro hydro turbine array with the water.

It seemed like a rather novel concept to me at the time but then recently I came across an article detailing this sort of 'green battery' system and now I am like Whoa it is brilliant as fuck!

Do not worry it is not some wacky notion that is meant to defy the laws of physics (where the energy created is greater than the energy used to pump the water uphill) it is simply energy conversion and storage.

Day-638 10-12-2018

Day 638. Just like that... the cold weather is here again.

Day-639 10-13-2018

Day 639. I am just going to keep it vague and hope that you live long and ponder.

Day 639. (Again) (Not so vague) Wake up...peak out from under the blankets...is the sun up...barely...good...get out of bed...turn on LED light...turn on netbook...start making espresso while netbook boots up...take a morning piss...damn it is cold in here...put on a few more layers of clothes...enter login password on netbook...open text editor...start watching a daily video...start typing out an article while brain is still mostly asleep...just type...edit and spell check later...espresso is done...pour eight shots into remnants of coffee and hot chocolate left over from the night before..keep typing article about the video...damn this video is long...keep typing...okay good the video is done...the article is written...sip more espresso...roll a smoke...is brain awake...no...good start editing and spell checking article...finish smoke...article is done...blink...good...open image editor and make cover image for video...save cover image...good...enough sun yet to start uploading video and charging netbook...maybe...do it anyway...plug in cellular signal repeater...wait for it to equalize...good...turn on phone's mobile data...wait for connection to establish...good...start WiFi hotspot...excellent worked first try...start app to block inbound calls and texts...I fucking hate spam phone calls and texts interrupting my data connection...that is why you have the app...Yeah that's right...okay everything loaded...gently turn the phone screen off...plug in backup battery to phone so it stays operational...gently place phone in DIY cooling cradle so it does not overheat...turn on fan for cooling cradle...damn that fucker is noisy...just jiggle it so it is quieter...good that worked...still kind of noisy but meh...okay turn on netbook WiFi card...connection established...good...open web browser...go to Dtube...login...upload cover image...it worked...good...start uploading video...wait for it...okay it is working...copy and paste article...add tags...add title...all set...wait a billion seconds for upload to finish...roll another smoke...open next video...start writing another article...almost awake enough to edit as I go...meh just write the fucking thing and edit later...okay good...pour more espresso...sip...sip...sip...finish the fucking smoke...video still uploading...okay go ahead and edit...all set not even any misspelling...that's a rarity...okay open image editor again...make a cover image...save new image...upload not done...back to text editor...open a third video...start typing article...awake enough yet to edit and write simultaneously...Yeah...then edit...good article done...still fucking uploading first video....gah I need real internet someday...nice fantasy...never going to happen...do dogs want out...fuck no it is cold outside and they are warm in the bed...damn they are some lucky dogs.

Day-640 10-14-2018

Day 640. Are you a lurker? Do you fail to actually engage with the people around you? Do you formulate opinions without asking any real questions? Do you leap to conclusions whilst ignoring empirical evidence? Does your cognitive dissonance inhibit your understanding of your impact upon the world around you? Are you sitting high enough on your horse that you cannot smell the trail of horseshit left behind you? Does flippant and flaky behavior guide your every decision and indecision? Do you engage in any critical thinking? Do you use deductive or inductive reasoning to assess the world both around and inside of you? Do you parse out your objective opinions from your subjective opinions? Are you arrogant enough to think that you live an enlightened lifestyle due to your socioeconomic status and lack of having a traumatic life history? Are you inane? Do you lack empathy or are you just an asshole? Have you grown jaded because you think life is not fair? Do you spend an exorbitant amount of time believing the spoon-fed malarkey that you are told by advertisements? Do you think for yourself? Do you know how to think for yourself? If you are experiencing any of these symptoms please stop using capitalism and materialism immediately and consult with what your psyche is trying to tell you... because you are probably pretty fucked up.

Day-641 10-15-2018

Day 641. Oh the days have passed and I continue to just keep plodding forward. Some days are better than others but overall I am liking it. In other news... use your imagination and (insert something interesting here.) Have a good day/night or something.

Day-642 10-16-2018

Day 642. Along my journey I have learned a lot of new and (to me) rather interesting things about a variety of stuff covering many topics. I have also learned much about myself but that particular landscape already being a familiar one to me I want to focus on the former.

I have learned a lot about low voltage DC electrical systems and much of it filled in some rather large gaps in my more fundamental understandings of how such systems actually work in regards to voltage, wattage, amperage and to some degree ohms. Being self taught over the years made some things more difficult to grasp than others but all in all I would like to think that I have a rather 'firm grip' at this point about the more practical (applicable) parts of not just how such systems work but how to design, build and occasionally advance upon them.

A good example here is that for many months after I got my twenty-four volt, two hundred and seven watt solar panel (that I use on a twelve volt system) I could not figure out how to use it to charge two separate batteries at once on two separate systems. So for all those months I used my twelve volt twenty watt solar panel to charge one of my deep cycle batteries and a third (very small) twelve volt battery just sat on a shelf unused because it was hooked up to my twelve volt ten watt wind turbine that only gets enough wind during the springtime or occasionally when a really fierce storm blows in to the region.

Anyway, I kept wracking my brain trying to figure out how to make it so that I could charge all my batteries with the sun and harness (store) more of the excess energy being created by my large solar panel without having to buy a more complicated (expensive) charge controller or having to put my batteries in series or parallel which I could not and/or should not do anyway because they are all of different sizes and types.

The entire time I kept feeling like I was missing something obvious but the harder I tried to fathom what that 'obvious' thing was the more it eluded me. It was kind of like having a word on the tip of my tongue but by trying to think what that word might be it travels vigorously into obscurity.

So one day I had the bright idea to see if it was possible to run two charge controllers off a single solar panel which lead me to scouring the internet and doing a lot of research on the subject. Fortunately I was not the only person to have such an idea and although it is a rather uncommon practice the principles were sound and other people had successfully done it.

The only hitch that I could see for my specific system was that one battery (being much smaller than the other) would invariably charge faster and the larger battery would charge slower especially when the small battery was finished charging and the electricity going to it's charge controller would basically be 'wasted' energy. Also on cloudy days charging both batteries simultaneously would be rather inefficient and neither of them would get much of a charge.

Long story short the thing that was 'obvious' and I could not figure out was all I had to do was literally just plug in the second charge controller and battery system into the big panel along with the other system that was already plugged into it. I even already had the second outlet that I would need already wired up. I literally just had to plug it in the entire time I had tried to puzzle out what to do.

As for the cloudy days and 'wasted' electricity once the smaller battery was finished charging all I had to do is add a two dollar switch to turn off the power once the smaller battery finished charging. I could have done without the switch and just plugged and unplugged the secondary system as needed but I wanted the convenience of the switch.

Anyway, for many weeks now I have been charging both my larger batteries this way off the big solar panel and used the smaller panel to charge my tiny battery.

There might be some sort of moral to this story but I will leave it up to the reader to figure it out. Have a nice day or something and be well.

Day-643 10-17-2018

Day 643. So in the last seven days I have successfully pulled two of my own teeth and now for the first time in way too many months I have zero pain in my face. I really have no regrets about it especially since both the teeth were the most painless extractions that I have ever had but I do have a bit of advice... always have the morning coffee before pulling out the tooth. For real though I was only half-awake and was rather surprised just how much it moved this morning when I pressed on it with my tongue and it more or less came out on it's own. So please do not picture me savagely pulling out my aching teeth. They were both already loose and I had been poking and prodding on them with my tongue every day for months trying to loosen them further and low and behold it worked.

Day-644 10-18-2018

Day 644. No matter how much I understand that in the physics of thermodynamics there is no such thing as 'cold' and that there is actually only an absence of heat... I am still cold!

Day-645 10-19-2018

Day 645. I used to get really excited about taking a five month break each year from consuming alcohol. Now I do not drink enough for it to really matter and the marginal excitement is rather underwhelming. I do not know why this lack of excitement makes me feel like I am somehow failing at something important but I really do not think it matters much whether I am excited about it or not... nor does it matter how I feel about it.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well and if you are not on Steemit yet... you should be!

Day-646 10-20-2018

Day 646. Woke up super early with too many ideas on how to increase the efficiency on my electrical systems. That is what I get for reading entirely too much information on DC power and solar power setups yesterday. My new configuration involves four charge controllers, three batteries and two solar panels.

The biggest change that I made is utilizing both my solar panels with two separate charge controllers charging my largest battery. My big solar panel is still setup to charge two batteries over two separate charge controllers so none of that has changed from my previous setup.

The big panel puts out more wattage than my PWM charge controller can handle so I used it's load out to feed a fourth charge controller that charges a tiny battery that now acts as a 'dump load' so that all that extra wattage has somewhere useful to go instead of just being dumped into the heat-sink of the initial charge controller.

All in all my systems are now about as good as they are going to get with what I have to work with. My brain slightly hurts from wrapping my head around it all but I can deal with that!

Have a pleasant day and be well.

Day-647 10-21-2018

Day 647. It is that time of year again when I wake up at three in the morning with my imagination set to full throttle exploring strange ideas and odd notions.

On the bright side at least I get to drink espresso earlier in the day than usual. This morning's espresso even has some rather delicious honey in it that I got gifted yesterday.

In other news it is rather chilly and the wind is gusting but other than that it is blissfully quiet.

Day-648 10-22-2018

Day 648. Okay leaves! Hurry up and fall off those damn trees already so that I will get more sun and have better cellular service.

Day-649 10-23-2018

Day 649. I have been thinking about how the chronicling of my days with these posts and my daily videos has shifted my perception on the passage of time. I have always been pretty good at estimating, keeping track of and managing my own time but now there is a certain continuity to it's passage that somehow helps lend some meaningful relevance to how the past relates to the present and vice versa that I find to be rather novel and albeit illuminating.

Being a long time journal writer this is nothing all that new to me but even with my most focused of journaling there were always gaps in the timeline between entries that always left me wondering what the hell went on during those 'gaps.' Memory often being a fickle and subjective thing is not wholly reliable to fill in the empty spaces and often shies away from recalling things in the exquisite detail that makes understanding how 'one thing truly relates to another thing' consistently possible.

Long story short I have discovered a great joy in such continuity of memory via externally chronicling bits and pieces of my day to day life and often find myself encouraging others to do the same.

The most important part of all this (for me) has been to simply share my more private life with folks that I care about so they can get a glimpse into not just how I live but also a side of me that I have more or less always kept rather private. All in all that has been a rather interesting endeavor in and of itself but what has kept me doing it is what I have learned along the way about myself and this strange feeling of 'continuity' with the passage of time and the perspective it lends me.

Anyway have a nice day or something and be well.

Day-650 10-24-2018

Day 650. I think that at this point I have exhausted every possible configuration of my electrical system in an effort to maximize both the efficiency and power production working with the gear that I have on hand.

My biggest bottleneck in the system is that I am using cheap PWM (pulse width modulation) charge controllers when I should be using MPPT (maximum power point tracking) charge controllers. Unfortunately the PWM controllers while affordable at only ten dollars a piece work well enough for the 'bang bang mosfet switches' they are... but they also do not exactly deal well with being fed twenty-eight to thirty-two volts (during full sun) to charge a twelve volt battery.

On the other hand they would do great if I were feeding a twenty-four volt battery bank but getting two identical batteries (and the wire) to create a twenty-four volt battery bank which would cost somewhere around two hundred and fifty dollarss and would require me buying a bunch of step down converters to power my twelve volt devices or buying twenty-four volt devices.

I really like the simplicity of a twelve volt system but I can see the appeal of using a twenty-four or even forty-eight volt system. So I keep thinking about just getting an MPPT charge controller that can handle the high voltage coming off my big panel and basically convert that high voltage into more charging amps but those controllers are pretty pricey with the decent ones starting at around a hundred dollars and the actual good ones starting at around three hundred dollars. There are of course cheap ones as low as thirty dollars but from everything that I have read about them they are unreliable and prone to failure.

So all these options just keep tumbling around in my head and even though I cannot actually afford any of these solutions... I just cannot stop thinking about them. It is kind of driving me a bit wacky and although I have exhaustively done research for simpler solutions... the only real solution seems to be either build a twenty-four volt battery bank or buy an MPPT charge controller.

The other possible solution that was not so obvious at first was to just say fuck it, leave everything as it is and just keep struggling along with an insufficient amount of power. The conundrum of the entire thing is that I actually make enough power except for running the netbook, WiFi hotspot, backup battery for the phone that acts as a WiFi hotspot, the cooling fan for the phone providing the WiFi, the cellular repeater so that I actually have enough consistent cellular signal, and the small light so that I can see my keyboard... all of that just so that I can write articles, create cover images for videos, upload videos to Dtube and make posts to Steemit and in turn not just be able to share the things I want to share but also actually make some revenue along the way. Which is actually working so that is nice but damn it is one hell of a process to convert video footage along with a little energy from the sun into usable revenue.

In a few days I will have been using Steemit and Dtube for three months and my account value is now sitting at a pleasant three hundred forty dollars and fifty one cents so that is a pretty awesome feeling in an of itself because it is working!

I keep thinking about how the first time I withdraw some money from my Steemit account I am going to purchase something that greatly improves my electrical system then make a video (and post) about it explaining what I got, how it improves my system and makes it possible to make more posts and upload more videos.

Anyway, now that I have gotten all this out of my system maybe my brain will somewhat let it go and I can get back to just plugging along and knowing (thinking) that all my efforts have been worthwhile and that the future is looking very unlike the past.

Have a nice day or something and be well.

Day-651 10-25-2018

Day 651. I am feeling pretty good about things and that is kind of alarming after so many years of not feeling that way but I think that I can manage to adjust.

Using Steemit for the last three months has definitely helped improve my mental attitude and also makes me feel better that what I am sharing actually has some real value. Using it is also making me feel like I might possibly have a 'financially secure' future which is a massive relief in and of itself.

Anyway, I think that all in all I am mostly happy and almost feeling a bit positive about what the future holds.

Have a nice day/night/moment and be well.

Day-652 10-26-2018

Day 652. Today's adventures included staying out of the perpetual rain, sitting by the heater, researching various things that are probably a bad idea to do with electricity and modifying a dysfunctional Chromebook into a glorified backup battery for charging USB powered devices.

Day-653 10-27-2018

Day 653. I often find myself reading a lot of technical jargon that my brain can not quite comprehend. I honestly do not know why the hell I do it but I absolutely enjoy muddling through said jargon looking for little gems of things that I can actually wrap my head around. I often do not feel any 'smarter' for doing this but I do often feel a bit humbled by what I do not know and sort of marvel at the intelligence of others.

As a good example here I have been doing a lot of research about forklift batteries and all the pros and cons of using them as an energy storage device in off-grid applications and whoa they seem like some pretty complex buggers that need some frequent maintenance to keep them operating efficiently. Really they are just a big lead acid deep cycle but they need their cells checked frequently with a hydrometer (whatever the hell that is) and they tend to require a lot more distilled water than 'normal' deep cycle batteries. They also self discharge rather rapidly (comparatively) and require a rather high amount of amps daily to keep them charged. I am glossing over all the technicalities there but you probably get the idea.... that they are not all that simple.

Anyway, I think exploring those kinds of technical nuances are important even if (comprehension) understanding is low because that is what research and learning (for me) is all about... the quest to attempt to understand things and occasionally actually understand them.

On a different note. It is another rainy and sort of chilly day but at least the sun is doing a marginal amount of shining and my batteries are charging so that is good because I have more articles to write and more videos to upload.

I hope everyone is doing well and grateful for the life they live. Have a nice day or something.

Day 653. (Again) (Night Time) Damn it I wrote a really long post but hit the wrong button on my phone and accidentally deleted it.

So a short summary is this: I remembered that I made a few Halloween themed mixtape tracks a few years back so I wired up my twelve volt speaker system and have been listening to one of them. This has lead me to thinking about how much I miss loud music 'on demand' and also making weird mixtapes loaded with weird samples. I have pretty much been using all my electricity lately to power my netbook so that I can write articles and upload videos which has basically become a job in and of itself over the last three months.

Anyway, I have not been feeling all that inspired to be creative lately (okay fine...for several years) but now I have a muse and I am like 'Whoa! I did not even know that those disused synapses could even fire anymore!'

We will see but do not be all that surprised if I start posting weird mixtape tracks again over the next few months. Have a good evening and be well.

Day-654 10-28-2018

Day 654. I wake up each morning somehow excited about the day to come. Not because everything is wonderful but because I actually look forward to doing research, writing and seeing what peculiar ideas are going to float up from the nether regions of my mind.

Most days nothing really special occurs yet I continually hope that some blinding inspiration might strike me like lightning and perhaps all the small epiphanies will add up to some sort of major understanding of... something... anything... that might make my life even slightly better than it was the day before. Sometimes that is just the addition of an on/off switch so that I do not have to plug and unplug some device... and sometimes it is revelations of a more inner-dimensional nature but regardless I think those minor (adjustments) advancements are what keep me interested in life.

Anyway, I probably just need to drink more espresso and bob my head to the music instead of making a post here but... meh.

Have a pleasant day and be well.