Dr. Daly in the daily

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/18/magazine/herman-daly-interview.html#commentsContainer

Zen of...

A guy on FB thought he had reset his VW bus engine valves, but then it wouldn't start. This is a fine lesson in the Zen of VW bus maintenance: 

You have at least one and perhaps two valves that are not closing. If all you touched was the LH valve train, then the distributor is still able to show you when the engine is firing on cylinder numbers three and four (The LH ones. Three is top left or forward left, as seen from the back of the engine. Four is bottom or rear left.) Pop the cap, rotate the engine on the crank bolt until the rotor arm is pointing at the place where number four HT lead used to be, check against the timing marks on the fan to be sure you're at TDC, then reset the valve lash (clearance) to 10 thousandths of an inch. Remember: Firing order is 1342 and the crank rotates two full turns for each full four cycles for a four cylinder engine: The timing marks, therefore, show TDC for one and four cylinders, but don't tell you which cylinder. It could be one or four. The rotor cap is what tells you which cylinder is at TDC, assuming the distributor hasn't been messed with. Rinse and repeat for number four. (Ten thousandths is the "old" setting for before we allegedly got better precision in engine parts and so on. The new is 6 thou, but in your situation you need more lash to be on the safe side.)Make sure to re-read the procedure for setting valve lash carefully, since you likely did something wrong before. Most likely you set the valve lash for number four when number one was at TDC and for number three when number two actually was. This is the usual mistake. There's an easy last-minute check. Both (inlet and exhaust) rocker arms should be loose and clatter a bit when you wiggle them at TDC with the rotor pointing towards that cylinder's HT lead on the cap. Once you get a start, reset the other side too, just to check. If you really did only change one thing at once, and it was actually the valves, you will get a start. There is only a slight chance that something else went wrong coincidentally. But a lot of guys can make themselves think they only changed one thing when they actually did other stuff too. So if it doesn't start, ask those kinds of questions. Did you tinker with the dizzy when you set the lash, for instance? All you should ever do is take the cap off and put it back on carefully. Then look for proximity. Did you accidentally knock the hot wire to the coil off? That's in the same region. Is the brake booster hose loose? The EGR hose? It's going to be something you did whether you like it or not. Denial is not a river in Egypt and not your friendly friend. Even removing and replacing the dizzy cap can be done wrong if you really try. The old science lab rule that you should never ever change more than one thing at once unless you can't help it applies to auto mechanics too.

Solar analysis

Just for "shits and giggles," and while waiting for my two sleepy princesses to get themselves out of bed, I ran the numbers on our solar PV system. 

(Yes, this is what passes as fun for me. Sad, I know.)

This was installed in spring 2019, but, thanks to the reluctance of our local power company, was not actually up and running until over a year later. 

(I had to take them to the Public Utilities Commission. Now there's a campaign to replace them with a public entity.)

It has now had two full years under its belt.

The system cost just under $3,500, cheap because I installed it myself with the help of two students who wanted the experience, as well as some expert help from our local solar power company. This is not counting the gas to Augusta to watch the PUC deliberations. 

It was repaired this spring after a lightning strike for just under $400. 

Total lifetime cost = $3900, give or take.

Total lifetime power production = 8.56 mWh.

At the time it was first commissioned, Central Maine Power's "Standard Offer" rate was around 17¢ per kWh. Now it's just under 20¢. 

Call it an average of 18¢.

That makes the value of our PV system's lifetime power production to be $1540. That gives an annual rate of return of $1540 ÷ 2 years = $770, or 19%/year.

Which certainly beats the market.

From the "Guest Manual"

AMENITIES: Dilapidation and decay: This is not Bar Harbor. It is hinterland Maine, not heavily visited by the hordes of cars and tourists you'll find on the coast. It is a formerly populated farming region that lost people after the (old) North West opened up. Most of the landscape is not natural forest but is farms abandoned just about anytime from 1830 to 2022. You came here because you wanted to find the real Maine, so enjoy it. Your neighbors are for the most part birthright Mainers, including Acadiens and later Québécois migrants with a few Wabanaki and MicMac, as well as incomers of one type or another: Amish settlers from northern Maine and Canada, original back-to-the-landers and new-blood Maine organic farmers, Florida sunbird retirees who get by on Social Security, often living in camper and trailers during the summer, and/or decades-long transplants from away. All are refugees from urban America. We all get on and get by on way less than most summer visitors do and are expert at it. It's not our job to tidy up our lives and landscapes to make Maine's hinterland look like suburbs-by-the-sea. It's a working landscape. Expect to find in it rusty trucks, run-down trailer homes, piles of firewood, graveyards of ancient rusty farm equipment, abandoned but somehow cherished motorcycles, snowmobiles, three and four wheelers and ubiquitous "yahd" trucks, as well as logged forests, struggling dairy farms, dilapidated Congregational and other churches being fixed up for homes, Grange halls falling down, cemeteries with orders of magnitude more people in them than the towns they are located in, and so on. All of these are violations of the National Park ethos of unsullied landscape without humans in it. But all are real Maine. Enjoy all of this, but also watch out, look, or listen for frogs in abundance in spring, geese at the farm pond, ducks in the ditch, chickens crossing the road, and Amish buggies going way too slow for comfort. Breathe. Smell the woods. Relax.

 

Grad school advice

A former student asked for advice on choosing a grad school on FB and I felt compelled to expand and expound. I've edited it up from FB style to blog standard. ("Bog standard?")

Enjoy:

The best advice I got before starting a PhD was that you should only start a research PhD program if you can think of nothing better to do with your life for at least six years. This doesn't apply to master's degrees. But it was very good advice for my PhD.

The other thing I'd mention is that there is an enormous glut of qualified people in some job fields for which advanced degrees are needed, and employers are finding ways to bid down the wages. Generally they do this by re-categorizing the work, so downgraded the job from from assistant professor to adjunct, or from full-time to part time, from on-staff to on-contract, and so on. They pass the burden of getting the initial qualification back to the employee in this way, leading to massive student loan debt if you are not competitive.

Apart from a few unions that have successfully organized graduate students, the only effective push-back against this and the general dumbing-down of higher education in the online age has been the accreditation agencies. This is why the "new" Unity College may be shopping around for an easier accreditor. 

But employers and HR professionals are generally wise to the difference between a six-year land grant PhD and a two-year "plastic" one from the online and for-profit organizations, and this is calculated into the hiring process.

This means you have to be prepared to compete academically, but also by taking additional research and other assignments. I helped win various grants for my advisors, grants that paid living expenses, research expenses, and tuition for my thesis projects, but I also did an enormous number of other projects for them that were on the face of it nothing to do with my actual thesis topics. 

For example, I set up and ran summer programs and a conference, I started a land trust, and I wrote many grant proposals. Distractions, for sure, and they slowed me down in my course work, comprehensive exams, and thesis projects. But the experiences stood me in very good stead afterwards in the world of work when I was finally hired as an assistant professor. They were exactly the kinds of things I found myself doing as a professor, they all paid part time salaries, and several came with tuition remission. 

These kinds of opportunities are generally limited to the land grant colleges and universities. The notion that a quick one-year MS online is cheaper fails when you go to bat for a job and the competition from the land grants have these kinds of experiences on their CVs and less student debt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university