We finally upgraded our  oldSamsung Galaxy 5 phones to some Google Pixel 3a.  Much faster, lots of room for data and stuff like WiFi and Bluetooth work reliably.  Nice to join the 21st century.  I have an old boat amp and waterproof speakers out in the shed to provide music to the yard.  Until now I plugged in with a wire.  Figured with the new phone I could use Bluetooth.  So I upgraded to the Bluetooth version of the amp.

Not too hard to swap out, but the audio had a terrible buzz with the new amp.  Figured it was the power supply but didn’t have a way to test it.  Realized I had a nice 12VDC source in my nearby mower battery.  Ran some jumper cables and it was clear as a bell.  Ordered a new power supply.  Hope it does the job.  I guess I could get a battery and stick with the cables.

My old friend and teacher Sudha Yalamanchili passed away earlier this year.  We met when I was in my mid-20s,  where we worked in in the same group at Honeywell in Minneapolis.  I was also working on my master’s at UMinn and Sudha was teaching some courses in what was called Parallel Processing in those days.  I took all three of his classes and they were the best classes I have ever taken. Until that time I was studying solid state electronics, but wasn’t doing very well and wasn’t enjoying it at all.  After Sudha’s class I had a new direction.

We became friends and exchanged emails every few months and got together, usually at technical conferences where we would introduce each other to like minded colleagues.  Sudha was also the guy I went to when I thought I might have a good idea.  I would run things past him and he would (always politely) tell me if it had already been done, or if it just wasn’t such a good idea.   Other times he would pause and maybe send me after some related work.  Those times I knew I might be on to something.

I’m going to miss the conversations.  I can’t say this about too many people, but he inspired me to do better things in my career and also taught me to be generous with the people around me.  What else could you ask for from another person?

In Loving Memory of Sudhakar Yalamanchili

ONE FOR THE ROAD

Brain Freeze: The Birth of Louisiana’s Drive-Thru Daiquiri Stand

The amazing story of how the drive-up Daiquiri stand was created and became a hallmark of Louisiana.

Until now I always assumed populism was mostly a left wing phenomenon. I was expecting a Huey Long style populist to emerge in the US after the financial crisis.  Instead we got a mirror image Kingfish, at least economically and politically.  The Mainly Macro blog explains how this happened.

Understanding why right-wing populism succeeds

Also from the New York Times:

This was on the New York Times most read list, so I imagine it is getting lots of attention.  Here is a small bit more.  Every young person should read this one.

About $1T has been pumped into the stock market from recent tax cuts. I assume the rest went to the top 0.1%.   From NBC (similar stories elsewhere).

What did corporate America do with that tax break? Buy record amounts of its own stock

The White House promised ’70 percent’ of the tax cut would go to workers. It didn’t.

When I was young, a friend of  the family said  to me “if you could see  the pollution a car makes, they would be illegal”. I was pretty young and this perhaps in the mid-1970s.  The friend was an old Cajun carpenter (not some sort of scientist)  who was doing some work on the house for my father.  I’m not sure what our conversation was, about but for  some reason it stuck with me.  I suppose I seldom, if ever, heard people criticizing cars, especially in those days.  From The New Republic:

The big deal with EVs is charging.  We ordered a T3 and sprung for the extended range, something we haven’t regretted.  But we have been through several phases when it comes to charging.

First, this was intended to be my wife’s car and not for a daily commute.  We figured we could get by on 110V in out garage.  That added about 4 or 5 miles of range per hour of charging.  Basically you keep it plugged in all night and whenever you are home.  Also, the plug wasn’t in a convenient spot, so we had an extension cord and you would have to step over it.  Not terrible, but not ideal, either.

We decided to supplement this with ChargePoint, a commercial charger that happened to have chargers in the garage where I parked for work.  For $25 for 4 months you got unlimited charging.  The plan was that I would take the wife’s car once a week or so and top it off.  And I would even get a better parking place out of the deal.

The ChargePoint gave 24 miles of range per hour of charge. Which was awesome compared to our garage 110V plug.  For a while this was ok.  Then I began talking to a friend at work with an older Model S who had a charger put in at his house.  Required extra wiring but he was getting (I forget exactly) but something way better than ChargePoint, which surprised me.  I (secretly) wanted one, but wasn’t keen on the expense.

Our daughter was going to college about 100 miles away and this put the Tesla 3 just out of range for a round trip.  We figured we could use ChargePoint there to get a small boost to make sure we got home.  The first time we found a sad little charger at a library that gave us enough of a boost after an hour or two to get us home without the dreaded Range Anxiety.

The next trip we found a charger at a Hilton across from where we were having dinner.  We were Hilton Honors members and the desk clerk let us charge up, even though we weren’t guests for that night.

It was a revelation.

I could watch the T3 charge on the app while we had lunch.  Almost a mile a minute.  By the time we were done with lunch we were almost topped off.  I knew there was no going back.

We got home and I called the electrician who did my pal’s Model S charger.  Our electric service came in on the other side of the house and we would have to run a new wire up to the attic across to the other side of house, back down and into the garage.  It was gonna be about $2k, but there were some rebates from the power company involved.   We went for it.  One of the best purchases I have ever made.  We get about 45 miles of range for every hour of charge.

It has totally changed the way we used the Tesla.  No more worrying in the back of my mind about scheduling the next charge.  It is now (literally) more convenient than a regular car, since you don’t have to go to the gas station and fill up.  A few times a week, just grab the charger (which is about two feet from the charge port of the car) and plug it in.

On two other recent trips (Waco to the north and San Marcos to the south) we checked out the Superchargers.  These are crazy fast.  Over 100 miles of charge per hour of plug in.  I would count on these for a longer road trip, with a bit of planning, of course.

All in all we really like the T3. I would say having a fast home charger makes a big difference, convenience-wise, but chargers outside of the home are still a good option.