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WHO? Oliver. oof San Francisco again, Brooklyn before, Atlanta & Chicago wayback. RECENT: uppers and downers Biodiesel FAQ linux Biodiesel Car Show! totally awesome driving Pear State TRAVELS: Biodiesel trip across America (January, 2005) Paris (April, 2005) Election work in NM (November, 2004) ARCHIVES: September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 May 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 August 2003 June 2003 LINKS TO PALS: elly Toshok Pete Tuggy Workstatus Nathan Express Train SEARCH: RSS: Get your RSS feed here |
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July 25, 2005 01:27 PMuppers and downersa rare day of impending doom. I'm not the naysayer (except for in the real estate market) typically, but I feel this sense hanging over me. This feeling that all the good times must come crashing down. San Francisco has really been putting out. There's been sunlight, and real true hot summer weather. There have been wonderful glorious nighttime drives along the ocean, with elly reading to me. There have been housewarming parties for people settling in, and going away parties for new friends going away. There have been injuries physical and otherwise, all with recoveries. I've ridden my bike, smelled fresh air, and seen the park. It feels like San Francisco, and our community has finally recovered from the last few years of bad news, and things have been looking up. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade; I love how much everyone has been going out, and how many wonderful people have become a part of my daily life at Ritual. I love that I've gotten to know new people and really make some relationships much stronger. I'm just worried. I don't want to go to Burningman. How weird. I'm not depressed, I'm just kind of over it today. I feel slow, and that all sounds fast. I just want to be at home with my love, running errands, taking unnecessary road trips, and cuddling yoko. It is even sunny outside, and normally this feeling just comes with the fog. Maybe it's all just chemical. Over the weekend, I had twice the coffee and half the sleep that I normally would get, and maybe I'm just crashing from that. Maybe I should just go away for a few weeks to understand how great things are here? Maybe I need distance to appreciate things. July 20, 2005 09:50 AMBiodiesel FAQI tell lots of people how much fun and success I've had with Biodiesel, and they tend to really be interested. There are some seriously FAQs, and I'd like to put them here for all to read about!Q: How do I convert my car to biodiesel?Any diesel engine car or truck will just work (JFW) with biodiesel. You don't need to convert anything, buy any special hardware, or anything. The common misunderstanding is the difference between Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO) and Biodiesel. Both setups require a diesel engine to start with, but the SVO gets really complicated in a hurry. You need to install a second fuel tank, a heating system to heat the vegetable oil, and lots more. It's definitely harder core, but it's also much more effort. The one caveat about standard biodiesel is that cars made before 1984 have natural rubber fuel lines, which need to be changed out (but hey, you've got a 20 year old car! some maintenance ain't so bad!) Q: How do I run my car on biodiesel?You just pump it into your diesel automobile & drive!! The beauty of biodiesel (IMHO) is that it is a splash blend fuel. This means that you can run a tankfull of biodiesel, followed immediately by a tank of petroleum (or "dino") diesel, with no changes, effort, or anything done to your car at all. Envision this scenario: You live in a nice urban area where there are biodiesel fueling locations. You have a full tank of B100, and you head down the coast to Big Sur. You have fun, and on your way back up, you realise that you're going to run out of fuel. You can just pull into any petroleum-diesel gas station, put in 1/2 a tank, or however much you'd like, and you'll just keep on motoring. No worries about range of your car, etc. (read more on the numbers below). Q: Why should I run biodiesel?Q: What kind of car should I buy?Any car or truck with a diesel engine. Many people like the Volkswagen TDi's (myself included) or the older model Mercedes. I know people with F150/250/350 pickup trucks, VW Vanogans, brand new fancy MB 320 CDis, Jeep Liberties (they ship from the factory running B5 !!!) old El Caminos, you name it. You just need a diesel engine! Q: Where can I buy a car?You can buy a used diesel car with ease in any of the 50 states. New? Anywhere except California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York or Vermont. There's the rub. In a classic story of the government being about 18 steps behind the rest of us, you can't buy new diesel passenger vehicles (read: CARS) in those 5 states until 2006 because of the high sulphur content of petroleum diesel fuel, which you're not going to run anyway. So, if you live in those states you have to either buy a used car (used is determined as having more than 7,500 miles, by the California DMV), or buy a new one out-of state, and take a LOONNGG road trip to get it here. Q: Where can I buy Biodiesel in the San Francisco Bay Area?Berkley at the Biofuel Oasis Q: Where can I buy Biodiesel?The National Biodiesel Board has a nationwide list of retail locations Look into Biodiesel Solutions in Canada! Q: How much does fuel (biodiesel) cost?About 10% more than petroleum diesel. Right now (2005/07), we're paying between $3.30 and $3.75 in the SF bay area. There are major tax incentives that have recently passed congress, offering up to a $1 tax credit per gallon of biodiesel. More on that later. Q: What kind of mileage do you get?The same as I get with petroleum diesel. Diesel cars tend to get better mileage than gasoline cars, but the crux is that mileage doesn't really change when you go to biodiesel. Q: What are all these numbers? B2? B20? B99? B100?It's the percentage biodiesel in a blend. Well, as I alluded to above, biodiesel is a splash blend fuel, so you can be running a certail percentage biodiesel with a certain percentage petroleum diesel. A common blend is called "B20" which means 20% biodiesel, 80% petroleum diesel. "B100" is pure biodiesel. All will run in your diesel car! Q: Does your car smell like french fries?Some biodiesel is made from recycled oil, some from virgin oil (mostly Soybeans in the USA). The recycled oil-based biodiesel is what I try to use, since it's using a waste product for something good, and yes, sometimes, it has a tint of a smell of french fries, but never enough to make me crave McDonalds. Q: Does it cost more to maintain a biodiesel car?The maintenance for a biodiesel car should be the same as a petroleum diesel car. There are only two additional biodiesel specific costs: pre-1984 rubber fuel lines need to be replaced with synthetic lines, and you'll need to deal with fuel filters. The deal is that biodiesel is a much better solvent than petroleum, and if you buy a used diesel that's been running dino-diesel for its whole life, your new biodiesel will flush out all of the soot & junk from your fuel system into your fuel filter. So, you'll need to replace your fuel filter now and then. It's not much harder than changing an oil filter, so you or your mechanic can do it easily and cheaply! Q: Will biodiesel void my new-car waranty?Nope. VW of America eve has published some literature supporting biodiesel! Q: Where can I read more about biodiesel?Fred's TDI Club has one of the best FAQ's around, IMHO. The Portland folks have a great faq.Do you have more questions? I hope so! I'm trying to make this a newbie starting resourse for biodiesel. There are lots more places to read about it, and I'd love to answer more of your questions. PLEASE email me your questions, and I'll happily answer them here, and help people in the future! :) July 19, 2005 12:58 AMlinuxDear Internet- Linux is a piece of shit. Please stop using it. thank you. July 16, 2005 06:15 PMBiodiesel Car Show!HI! Today, there was a Berkely Biodiesel Cooperative sponsored Biodiesel Car Show in Crissy field on the Presidio! It was really great fun. I saw people who I've been working with at the San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative, people who started to educate me about Biodiesel in the first place, and educated lots and lots of happy newbies! It was so much fun! I'm totally exhausted.
July 15, 2005 01:24 AMtotally awesomehi!!!! everything is fucking AWESOME!!! $@!!! :) :) *bounce* I've been working odd-jobs for friends just because I have the time. It's been really satisfying to work with my hands and do things that make my pals happy to get done. I've sorted all of Tuggy's CDs, gave him a ride to work when I was done, and got his life story, which was awesome to hear. He so exceeds all expectations in all the best ways. I then helped elly with shell scripts and php. she was verry happy. THEN I got biodiesel for das auto, and gave Pete rides to Sports Basement (FREE BEER!), the driving range where a salesman saved pete $100, and then to the warehouse. I'm helping him liquidate some of his old stuff. THEN life got awesome. We went to Delfina. No link needed. You know it and its glory or you don't. if you don't, you should. The eating. The drinking (2x cost). The chese plate! The sharfenberger cake. holy god. It's everything I remember and so much more. mmmm. I need a fancy job again. The perks of the good life are nice sometimes. Other times, the fancy jobs make me want to kill the entire human race, so maybe some balance is in order? *wink* *oontz* coffee++ July 10, 2005 11:16 PMdriving(there was a time, long ago, in a room with two tall windows, drapes shuttered tightly, when I sat on the phone into the wee hours with Liz, bot of us worrying about girls and worrying about boys. As the hours grew later, I rested my eyes, only later awakening to the sound of her voice in the phone, wondering how I was doing. "Driving. Just Driving." I said.) Sometimes, I just need to drive. Time alone, the open road, all that stuff. I always assume that I'll use that solitary time alone to ponder all the things in the world, and solve all of my pressing emotional problems, or at least figure out what kind of a job I want to have when I grow up. But in reality, I either turn the music up real loud and open all of the windows, or I call all of my friends whose voices the internet is never quite able to give me. I drove down the 280, ever my favorite road, towards LA or somewhere. It didn't matter where I was going, I just needed to be in motion. I got sidetracked and ended up driving all around my old neighborhood in San Jose. So many new buildings, new condo complexes, and chain stores. It was a little sad and suburban, but also reassuring in some time-goes-on sort of way. Greg's & my old house was still there, and looking nice. Someone even planted bushes/hedges in the obvious troughs that always wanted us to deposit plants or flowers or something green along the front walkway. It is good for me to remember that there were good things about living down there, living that life of tragic suburban isolation. It's even sadder to realise that there's really no part of that life in me anymore. No element of my daily routine. No friends that still come for coffee. All is so different now. At some point, after looking for biodiesel in San Jose, I drove back up to SF, picked up elly, a yellow dunny, some Ritual coffee, and headed south again. The sun was waning in the sky as Miles Davis & Gil Evans played in the car. We rolled down Valencia, merging onto the 280-secret-exit-from-town that I love so much, elly started to read to me. My parents read to me extensively when I was a kid. I think it's one of the reasons (in addition to being an only child) that I just consumed books back then. elly reading to me probably triggers some pleasant childhood memory, because I enjoy it so much. I took her to see the old house (two trips! one day!), and then we headed over the 17 to Santa Cruz and dinner at Saturn Cafe. Dinner was yummy at this dive of a destination. We've totally made a ritual out of it, and there was some quality wandering down the crowded streets, filled with people enjoying life and the night, and generally being alive. Good stuff. Then, whim and fancy set in. We decided to drive to Big Sur. Bear in mind that at this point, it was 11:30 at night, and Big Sur is at least 1.5 hours the wrong way from Santa Cruz. This meant at least a 3 hour return trip. It was nice out, the stars were shining. There was no reason not to go. The route down Hwy 1 was open and beautiful. The stars twinkled brighter and brighter as we left civilization farther and farther behind. Finally we stopped on a turnoff and leaned against the car watching the beauty of the Milky Way fading into its own reflection in the Pacific. The racoons reminded us that we were grounded there in nature, but I wondered if we might jsut fall off the edge of the earth right then and there. elly read more to me the rest of the way back North, getting me more and more engrossed in a very San Francisco novel. I can't wait to go hear the rest of it! As we drove the very last leg of the route home, up the 101 at 4:30am, how could we not stop for some donuts?
450+ miles. Contentment. Sunrise bedtime. I don't want a 9-5 job. July 04, 2005 11:54 PMPear StateDid you know that we were almost the pear state?? Wtf dude. WTF.
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