To lengthen a short story, we had a local school teacher, Jay Clapper, that came up with the idea that we (Wray School District) could benefit from installing and operating a Wind Turbine. Even without support, Jay took the ball and ran with it. He got information about turbines, he researched the best companies, and I believe he even had a wind turbine company lined up that would grant the school district a “deal” on the price. Jay lined up some of our local wealthy folks and with his enthusiasm and facts, easily persuaded many to donate funds for the cause. Now, Jay needed the school board’s blessing. This was Jay’s first and maybe only mistake. Jay approached the school board with his pitch. It was good, too good. They bought in. Here the trouble started, in their infinite wisdom, the school board took over, more or less pushing Jay aside and changing pretty much everything.
After a year or two of dealing with this, Jay had had enough. He quit. He moved. And we lost a great teacher and asset to the community. But oh, the fun continued. The school board went ahead with their plans.
Cutting to the quick; the school board bought some land, had the turbine installed, and got the town of Wray to wire the turbine into the electrical grid. They even got the state governor to come down and proclaim to the world how grand the turbine is and great the school board was. It even became a political pedestal during the election year. What could go wrong with such high praise? Well, what if the darn thing never worked? That is right, the wind turbine has never produced electricity! For over four years, this behemoth has stood over the town and has proclaimed our idiocy.
But I prefer to look upon the thing as a reminder about Jay. May God bless him, for we did not.
Before anyone gets their panties in an uproar, this how I remember the events. If your memory serves differently, please leave a comment.
Filed under: Tech, Video's, fun — Administrator @ 8:01 pm
I have been using Chrome over Firefox for about a year now simply because it is faster. But, evidently my opinion isn’t good enough for Google. They had to do some ‘real’ tests to prove that Chrome is faster. Hence the video below;
My sister, Jeanie Hoppal, is one heck of an artist. One of her many talents is painting. She even teaches the Bob Ross style of painting. You might know of Bob Ross via his long time running show on PBS, you know, he was that curly headed dude that was always saying “and now let’s make a happy tree…” Unfortunately, Bob passed on before the home computer really caught on. But if he were still alive, I wouldn’t be surprised if he ‘painted’ using the PC and using GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program). GIMP is free, and so are the many tutorials.
I might have to try to emulate the results in the above tutorial. But I do not expect similar results for unlike my sister, I have no talent.
Have you ever made a decision on the flip of a coin? Well, if not, maybe you do not believe in taking a chance every once in awhile. But if you are the sort that will wake and ask yourself, “Hmm, should I wear the red shirt or the blue one?” and can not make up your mind (caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet), then sometimes you will let fate/chance make the decision for you by flipping a coin. If that is you, then I have a treat for ya. Random.org has a virtual coin flipper to solve your dilemma. Of course I like to use the $50 US coin, but you can choose from just about any coin in the world. Heck, you can even toss multiple coins at the same time!
Give it a try, what will you have for lunch today?
Pizza or another salad?
Microsoft has gotten into the online security biz with Security Essentials (SE). SE is a combined anti-virus and anti-spyware program that is free. It works on XP and Vista. SE is new enough that I have not heard of any reports of how well it works yet, but I am guessing that it will be as good as Free AVG which is what I used in the past. It took me about 20 minutes to install it on a Vista machine. That time frame also included the time to uninstall AVG which is a good recommendation (anti-virus programs seem to conflict with each other).
Don’t know if you folks remember the national news back when the Democrats were getting together for the national convention (DNC) in Denver? There was some flaq over how the Democrats were promoting ‘green credits’ and one of the examples they were promoting was a wind turbine that didn’t ever work? Supposedly the turbine was fixed by the actual DNC convention time.
Well, this is that turbine, getting fixed. Not again, for it has never produced its intended amount of electricity. Come to find out, the generator that hooks directly to those huge propeler wings was the wrong one. They kept on trying nickel and dime repairs until all hope ran out and finally deemed just to replace it with the right generator.
This ‘repair’ has been going on for over a year!
(btw, the picture on the news link above is mine too)
Have you ever made a decision on the flip of a coin? Well, if not, maybe you do not believe in taking a chance every once in awhile. But if you are the sort that will wake and ask yourself, “Hmm, should I wear the red shirt or the blue one?” and can not make up your mind (caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet), then sometimes you will let fate/chance make the decision for you by flipping a coin. If that is you, then I have a treat for ya. 
