So what is the real story about Texas power failure??

 Lotsa people blame the power failure on the windmills going off line.  The greenies blame the natural gas suppliers failing to provide gas causing the gas plants to drop off line.  Me, I suspect the windmills did it, but I don't have any solid evidence.  All I know is what I see on the 'net and on TV.  And I have not seen anything convincing there.

Some questions for the intrepid newsies the answer.

What is this talk about the windmills freezing up?  Do they use water for something?  What might that be?  Do they mean ice buildup is blocking their rotation?  How can that be, the windmill blades produce enough torque to turn an alternator under load, surely that is enough torque to break any amount of ice, anywhere?  

What is this talk about natural gas wells and pipelines freezing?  Natural gas does not freeze at any temperature a hard winter freeze can reach.  Is it water freezing somewhere??  What is water needed for in a gas pipeline??  

What is this talk about failure to winterize power plants?  What does winterization do for a power plant?  

Boy, that governor Cuomo gets a lot of TV airtime, on Fox no less

 Cuomo is getting sued and worse over his grannie killing policy of putting Corona virus victims back into nursing homes where they infected the rest of the residents,  and lying about nursing home Corona virus deaths.  And they will think up more stuff to lay on him as time goes on.  

But Fox gives him a lot of airtime to give his side of it, uninterrupted by fact checkers. 

Free up 9 Gigs of disk space.

 I discovered that my desktop had a folder Windows AND a second folder Windows.old, both folders being 9 gigs.  I started out working on 5 megabyte DEC RK05 disks on PDP-11s.  I still think in terms of conserving disk space.  9 Gigs seems like a lot of disk space.  

Anyhow Windows.old pops up when the machine gets upgraded, in this case upgraded from Win 8 to Win 10.  The upgrade routine simply renames the old version of windows to windows.old and then puts the new version of windows into a new windows folder.  This allows you to go back to the previous version of windows should you want to.  In my case Win 10 has been working just fine, all my programs run properly, and I would never want to go back to Win 8, it was flaky.  So, I decided to recover 9 Gigs by zapping windows.old.  

  You cannot just delete windows.old from Explorer.  It is big enough to choke a hog, and it still carries protections against deletion that it enjoyed when it was the active Windows.  Not a problem.  Windows can fix it all.  In Explorer find the master folder C:.  Right click on the C: folder and select Properties.  In Properties select "Disk Cleanup".  In Disk Cleanup select "Clean up System Files".  This will display a number of different files you can clean.  Select the "previous versions" and let her rip.  It takes a while but I gained 9 Gig of free disk space. 

Farewell Rush Limbaugh

 Good man.  He will be missed.  Rush understood where a lot a Americans were coming from.  He spoke for them and to them.  Pax vobiscum.  My condolences to Rush's family.

Real electric plants vs fake electric plants.

 

We expect the electricity to stay on, 24-7.  We count on it in fact.  My heating plant, an oil burner, won’t heat when the juice goes off.  We depend upon electric hot water heaters, electric stoves, electric lights, electric well pumps.  If the power fails in winter my pipes will freeze in a matter of hours. 

   To keep the lights burning on a cold winter night takes conventional power plants, coal fired or natural gas fired, nuclear plants, hydro plants, the kind of generator that will put out power anytime it is needed.  We call these sorts of electric plants real electric plants.  Others call them baseload plants

  “Alternate energy”, beloved by greenies, cannot be depended upon when you need it.  Solar stops working at sundown, which happens every day.  Wind stops working when the wind stops blowing, something that happens fairly often even up here in the White Mountains.  In fact right now as I write this, it is a dead calm.  And we call undependable electric plants fake electric plants.  All the fake electric plants do is raise my electric bill as the power companies are required by law to purchase power from the fake electric plants at outrageous prices. 

    The electric companies, to keep the lights burning, need to own enough real power plants to handle full system load all the time.   The plants are expensive, several billion dollars, and the electric company has to take out a mortgage from a bank to pay for their construction.  And making the monthly mortgage payments is the electric company’s biggest expense.  Things like fuel and personnel costs are way smaller undependable wind and solar suppliers.  .  As long as they are paying the mortgage, the electric companies would just as soon operate the plants, sell the juice, and pay the mortgage with the proceeds.  They don’t need expensive and undependable "alternate energy".

We want to make sure the electric companies put in enough real power plants to keep the lights burning on a cold windless winter night.  We don't want them to fritter away money of fake electric plants.  Looks like Texas has put in a lot of fake electric plants that don't work when they need them and not enough real electric plants.  

 

Ventilation systems in schools???

The teachers and their unions are claiming the "ventilation systems" need upgrading.  The school I went to didn't have a "ventilation system".  It had big double hung sash windows all down the outside wall of the class rooms, that opened.  Open them up and we got a lotta fresh air. 

Are we at a significant turning point right now?

 Mark Levin, Fox news commentator, thinks we are, that future historians will point out January 2021 as an important turning point.  Things get a little vague when he talked about what we were turning from and to.  

I am not sure we are are a real turning point, you don't know until the turn has happened.  But, if we are, then it is a matter for turning away from Jeffersonian democracy, American exceptionalism, free market capitalism, and Christianity.  Turning toward political correctness, Critical race theory, and Marxism, and atheism.  

It is certainly time for those of us that still believe in the traditional American ideas to speak up for them.  And elect representatives who believe in them.